Disambiguation and Invitation

To Brett and John, concerning my Socrates comment:

(If you're not hot for philosophy, skip 4 paragraphs.)

What I meant was that Socrates' main claim to fame was much more minimalistic and negative than that of, say, Plato. Socrates primarily asked questions and led people to discover their own internal inconsistencies, and though Plato does insert many non-methodological teachings into his mouth, one gets the distinct impression that he himself didn't strongly advocate anything other than logical consistency and the never-ending truth quest.

This is opposed to Plato's elaborate schema and his abundant opinions on everything from censorship to metaphysics to pedagogy.

I feel as though it is better to remain truly agnostic and skeptical, holding onto my current "version" of beliefs loosely. It's much "safer" philosophically, but much less interesting to other people. When one has little to contribute himself, all analysis is then focused on the deconstruction of the other's beliefs.

I know this distinction through experience. I had become much more polarized than I was at one time, and it made my position, which was based on only a spattering of insufficient research, was vulnerable to deconstruction itself. That's just it; every position I could currently advocate is assailable. Nothing is really falsifiable. In essence, I have many many many years before I will feel safe drawing real "Platonic" conclusions.

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The Dervish tonight! Going with Kelly, Ricky, and Jacky, hopefully meeting Robert Crowe and Joe from Rocky Horror there. Anyone else who wants to show, I will be elated if you can make it.